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Seasonal Planting Overload

A new client’s project calls for seasonal plantings in two important pots sitting atop columns flanking the front walkway. I hope to be able to show you the changes we make to the planting palette in the rest of the garden, not sure when, but tonight I have seasonal plantings on the brain.

I don’t get asked for seasonal plantings very often, so I dove into all the bazillions of options – so many plants, so many cultivars of each! Do you know how many Violas there are? Heucheras? Ipomoea, Coleus, Petunia, and so forth!!? I wound up with 60 photos in short order and had to figure out how to organize it so the Owner (or I) wouldn’t have a stroke from too many options. Below are 36 of the 60 I saved right off the bat, you can see how the editing process becomes king. Some are my own photos, some from various growers, many came from Proven Winners (credit where it is due!) which is a large commercial grower that supplies pretty much every nursery I know:

There are many constraints in narrowing this down: changes pending in the rest of the garden, soil volume in the planters, and the intention of swapping the plants out seasonally. Additionally, whatever we plant has to look good when it is new, add color coordinated with a TBD planting palette, and be showier than the succulents they have now which blend-in too much with their surroundings. The most limiting of these is the soil volume – not much soil volume = not big plants and not very many. I know, we’ve all seen photos of amazing stuff in teensy pots, but this is usually the result of growers’ careful (read: fertilized like crazy under perfect greenhouse conditions) management and not what we might expect at home.

I assume you’re familiar with the “recipe” for container plantings? Some say you need “spillers”, “fillers”, and “thrillers”. That’s great if you have room for all that diversity and you want mixed plantings. I am not so sure these planters will look so good with too many different things; the soil is only 13″ across and 9″ deep. They’re beautiful planters, just not very big.

I came up with a strategy – after I saved all those photos. My strategy with most planting palettes is to gather in lists and photos everything I think will work and then edit until only a few favorites remain. I often print photos of everything and arrange them all over my desk, developing groupings of favorites and rejects, moving photos between these groups often until I’ve covered all the bases – seasonal interest, form, leaf color and texture, etc. Further edits seek to eliminate anything that clutters the vision, and viola! … until I show it to my Client …

So tonight, to stave-off the aforementioned stroke, I limited the plants to 3 options: two plant combos, one plant that will fill-in, and bulbs planted under something else. I further limited the options to annuals (except the bulbs) and to color groupings I named “Chartreuse Juice” (a small sample of the options above) and “Lavender Carmel” (a small sample of the options below). They seemed to separate themselves out naturally and fit in with the two plant palette options I am proposing for the rest of the garden.

Given that the planters are only big enough for one or two kinds of plants at a time, that will be the next step with the Client – what looks good together? What can stand on its own? I still have waaay too many options, but I know my favorite combinations, and the outliers will be held back so we both don’t need ambulances by the end of our meeting.

(and yes, I had entirely too much fun with Big Huge Labs making these mosaics)